Adorer C'est Vivre
by this-will-linger
Summary: There are far too few stories about Alice and Jasper. Therefore, this is an exploration of the relationships between characters not addressed in the books and a situation that I think could very well arise. As realistic as I could manage.
1. Chapter 1

_Twilight_ belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

_A pale hand. Lifeless. Body lying crumpled on the wet leaves. Red, orange, brown leaves. The head thrown back, neck exposed, stained red like a scarlet ibis. A trail of crimson across the leaves. A single drop of blood lingering on a pale lower lip._

Every muscle in her body contracted.

_Two pale lips. Sculpted jaw line. Blond locks dripping slowly into two burgundy eyes._

The vision dissipated as she screamed.

"Alice!" he shouted unnecessarily, digging his fingers into his forehead in an attempt to relieve himself of the nonsensical flood of images flashing from her mind into his. He threw the door open in a blur and grabbed her shoulders, peering into her wide, staring eyes.

"Alice, Alice, what is it?"

"Jasper," she whispered.

"He's not here, he went hunting. He should-"

She shrieked. "Jasper!"

Edward squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the pictures still streaming in at lightning speed. One image gradually filtered out, repeating over and over. Jasper's horror-stricken face, lips stained crimson.

"What did he do," Edward murmured.

Alice reached blindly for him. "Jasper…Jasper." She stumbled to her feet with the grace of a falling leaf and flew out of the bedroom.

"Alice, wait, Alice."

She was down the stairs in a fraction of a second, sweeping past Esme and Carlisle, standing at the foot of the stairs wearing twin shocked expressions. The front door was flung open so hard it knocked a hole in the sheet rock, white dust disappearing into the white carpet.

There was a resounding crack that echoed off the massive trees as she collided with him in the front yard. He continued into the house, staring straight ahead of him in spite of the vampire clinging to his neck, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist.

Rainwater cascaded off them as he climbed the stairs at a near-normal pace, ignoring Rosalie and Emmett, who had appeared in the hall. He strode into the room that had always been called Alice's. It was not long after school, and she had been preoccupied. Her wedding ring lay on the dresser.

As he leaned over, Alice melted off him, clutching his sleeve in fear and then panic as his fingers closed around the ring and she realized the truth that had not been included in the vision.

"Jazz," she whispered, frozen. He slid the ring into his pocket and turned to leave the room.

"Jasper, no!" He stopped in the doorway at her scream.

"I can't," he said softly.

Alice approached his back soundlessly. "Can't what"

He turned to face her, his newly burgundy eyes trapping her gaze. "I can't stay with you."

"You can't leave me!" she screamed, fumbling for his arm, his jacket, his hand. He pulled away from her and ran down the stairs. She was faster than him, even as she stumbled. She blocked the front door and looked up at him, pleading. The rest of the family faded into the background.

"Jasper, you can't go. What about fifty-eight years? We haven't been apart for fifty-eight years."

He shook his head, water droplets flying into her face. "I'm no good for this place. This town, this house, this family. I will make a mistake again! It will be bigger, a massacre! No matter how hard you try to pretend I can turn against my nature, my monstrosity." He snarled, his teeth gleaming. "I will never be like any of them!"

"Then we can go, we can leave here forever! I would do it, Jasper, I would do it right now. We can go anywhere you want!"

He stared down at her and shook his head again. "I'm no good for you."

"You are the only thing that has ever been good for me!"

He ripped her from the doorway as though he were ripping his heart out.

"No!" She grabbed for him frantically, missing by inches, stumbling through the door after him, shouting to the point where everything became incoherent but his name. She flung herself at his feet, her fingers desperately clutching the edge of his jacket.

"I can't," he said again, looking past her into the forest. "I can't, A-"

She blinked rainwater out of her eyes and stared up at him furiously. "Go on," she hissed.

His gaze dropped to her. "What?"

"Say it! Say my name!"

His resolve wavered for an instant, then his lips flickered imperceptibly, the word spilling from them in a dead tone. "Alice."

The anger drained from her eyes to be replaced with utter emptiness.

He turned and walked away.


	2. Chapter 2

_Twilight_ still belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

Edward lowered her gently into the bathtub and turned the faucet as hot as it would go. She opened her eyes at the warmth and looked down to see her clothes soaked with mud and rainwater, already clouding the bathwater. Edward let out the drain without shutting off the water to let the brown filter out. He knelt beside the tub, his eyes on Alice, who sat motionless, her hair plastered to her head and dripping down her face.

Another hand turned off the faucet and Edward looked up to see Esme, carrying a china pitcher and her bottle of rose shampoo. She didn't need to send a thought to Edward; he rose silently and shut the door behind him.

Esme dipped the pitcher into the steaming bath and tipped it over Alice's head, then, humming softly, began to wash her hair. Alice's short hair, never noticed next to Rosalie's. By the third rinse, her shoulders had relaxed.

"I love you," she whispered.

"I know you do," Esme said softly. "I love you, too."

"I don't know what to do."

Esme refilled the pitcher from the faucet. "Well, you hope he's made a terrible mistake. And you hope he realizes it. And if he doesn't, then you remember that he left to keep from hurting you any more."

"He wasn't hurting me."

Esme combed her fingers through Alice's hair. "Oh, sweetheart."

Alice turned to look at her, her eyes a heartbreaking shade of gold. "You're much too good of a mother."

Esme set the pitcher on the edge of the tub and pulled her into her arms, ignoring the wet seeping into her shirt. "Come on, little Alice," she murmured.

Letting the tub drain, she helped Alice peel off her sopping clothes and dressed her in a matching pajama set, one she kept for "those curl-up-inside days." She took her through the bedroom quickly, hoping that she wouldn't notice the wedding band on the dresser.

Esme and Carlisle's room was swathed in fabrics and colors that felt like adoration: gold, cream, rose, mahogany. Alice curled up on the bed and watched Esme close the curtains. The light from the lamp bathed the room in a softness between white and yellow.

There was a gentle tap on the open door. Rosalie's gaze swept the room before landing on Alice; her eyes were softer than usual as she approached the bed. "Do you want to braid my hair?" she asked quietly, looking down at the comforter, tracing the patterned flowers with an index finger. She turned her back, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed, silent as Alice parted her hair and combed through it. They took more time than was needed, Alice running her fingers through the sections with rhythmic strokes and twisting them together slowly. Esme put a disc on the record player and then settled behind Alice, rubbing her shoulders with care. No one spoke until the braiding was finished and Alice tapped Rosalie's back gently. "Thank you, Rose," she murmured. Rosalie lowered her eyes with an embarrassed nod and left, closing the door with a soft click.

Alice sank into the mattress, curling on her side, her hair fluffing out around her head on the pillow. Esme sat back against the headboard with a book of Emily Dickinson's poetry, opening it to the middle and reading aloud. After a few pages, Alice started to shiver.

"I feel…sick," she whimpered.

Esme pulled her head into her lap and brushed the hair back from her cold forehead. Alice fell into a dazed state that might have been called fever until the sun pressed at the curtains.

"She looks like she's actually asleep," she heard Edward say distantly. She blinked and he came into focus, sitting on the edge of the bed. She wondered for a brief moment why he was there before she remembered everything with a jolt and a wave of nausea swept through her.

"Alice?" She felt Esme's hand on her shoulder.

"I wanted to tell you that we're going to school, the rest of us," Edward said. "I figured you're staying home, so I will tell the office that you're sick."

Alice blinked a few more times, sitting up and trying to ignore how ridiculous her hair looked, flattened from the pillow. "No, I'm coming to school."

"But, Alice," Esme protested.

"I have to do something, and I'm not suicidal," she muttered, eyeing Edward, who glowered.

"You know it will be very hard to be there," Esme told her.

Alice sighed inaudibly and let her face fall into her hands for a few seconds before lifting her head again with as neutral an expression as she could muster. "Staying here would be harder."

Edward drove more slowly than usual; Alice felt his eyes drift to her every few minutes. She stared fixedly out the window, listening to Emmett and Rosalie murmuring quietly in the back seat. Emmett laughed loudly at something but cut it off suddenly, as if remembering that humor was inappropriate. Alice wanted to turn and tell him to _please keep laughing because it was the most normal thing in the car, _but she wanted to avoid seeing how Rosalie had slid into the middle out of habit, leaving the seat behind Edward empty.

Bella's truck pulled into the parking lot as they climbed out of the car, and Edward looked at Alice apologetically.

_Go on, _she thought to him. _I'll be fine. You've already helped by staying home last night._

With a pained look, Edward answered, "She understands."

Alice followed Rosalie and Emmett to English, then Emmett to calculus, who made nervous conversation, paying more attention to doodling than talking to her. Then came French, alone. She slipped into the desk crowded beside the empty one in the corner, focusing on the squeak of the chair, the chatter around her, the shuffling of papers.

"_Et, Alise, où est Julien? Est-il malade aujourd'hui?_"

She responded a moment later than was natural. "_Oui, il est très malade._"

The teacher spared a sympathetic smile. "Tell him to feel better."

He proceeded to divide the class into pairs.

"Alice?" a voice asked tentatively. "You're my partner. Are you all right?" She looked genuinely concerned. Alice wondered how bad she must look.

"I'm falling ill…Angela, isn't it?"

The girl nodded. "We've worked together before, when Jasper's been out."

Alice's breath halted and Angela frowned. "Are you sure you don't need to go to the nurse?"

To inhale felt like forcibly thrusting oxygen into her lungs. "Actually, that might be a good idea."

Out of sight of the classroom, she wandered away from the buildings to a bench along the sidewalk, pulling her hood over her head even though she would have preferred the rain. In a sudden, awful flash of hope, she pulled her cell phone out of her coat pocket. No calls, no messages. Her finger hovered over the '2' for a full minute before she called Jasper's phone, fighting to keep her breath even. Five rings and the automated message kicked in. Then his voice said, "Jasper Hale," and she froze, holding the phone to her ear long after the call had disconnected.

She tucked her knees up to her chest and probed into the emptiness inside her head. Every minute seemed to bring her closer to panicking, because it truly was emptiness. She hadn't had a vision since Jasper had left, not a single image. Nothing to tell her where he was, what he was doing, whether he was going to return or keep his intentions of leaving her alone forever. Not even a vision of something ordinary. There was a clouded void where her second sight should have been. The feeling was one of understanding only half of what was happening around her.

"Alice."

"Edward," she forced through chattering teeth.

"What are you doing out here?"

"It hurts," she whispered.

"What does?"

"Everything."


	3. Chapter 3

_Twilight_ … still belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

_I am elated to have such appreciative reviews, and even just any reviews! This is the first time I've tried submitting anything – usually it all stays in my head or in a notebook. Thank you for your interest :D_

A tiny bit of the other side of the story as well:

He was driving a car. He had no idea where he had gotten it. His memory felt fractured. He remembered running through the forest as fast he could, crashing into trees and continuing without a pause, because if he stopped, he would have turned and sprinted in the opposite direction. He remembered the highway, the moon, hating the silence and hating the songs the radio played more. It was ripped out of the dashboard. The only thing that was clear was her face.

He sucked in air and realized he had forgotten the last time that he had breathed.

It was only habit.

And he wasn't intending to live around humans anymore.

He realized he was still driving aimlessly. After a few miles, a large green sign directed him with arrows and blue shields to either New Hope or Minneapolis. The recent breath rushed out of him.

Minnesota.

He took the next exit and pulled into a gas station. It was cloudy. He filled the tank and went inside to pay, stopping dead inside the door at the feeling that struck him. It was as if the man at the register were merely a mannequin. There was no emotion. Perhaps it was simply a severely apathetic person. He turned down the aisle to move closer to the other two customers, but from them, too, was sheer blankness. Fear coursed through him at the near-painful disconnectedness. Shaking it off, he approached the register to pay for the fuel, trying to ignore the noticeable shudder that ran through the cashier at his burgundy eyes. Counting out pennies, he shuddered as he realized that one was not a coin but a ring.

Dumping the rest of his nickels on the counter, he walked out in a daze, ignoring the cashier waving his receipt. He crawled into the driver's seat and stared at the gold in his palm, tracing it with trembling fingers, touching his own ring finger and finding it bare. He imagined the ring on her finger, how he had slipped it onto her finger, how unnecessary the vows had been because that one gaze had always said so much more.

He rested his head on the steering wheel, seeing her face behind his closed eyes. Her look of desperation.

"Alice," he whispered. Everything within him shattered.

Esme's attempts to keep her downstairs could only work for so long; sooner or later, she had to go back in the bedroom. Things tended to be easier when done sooner, but she doubted if this should be easy in any way.

Someone had closed the door. Alice turned the knob silently and forced her eyes open. Everything was exactly as it had been, down to the white shirt carefully laid out on the bed. Without truly intending to, she crossed the room and lifted the shirt to her face, breathing into the collar and choking as the scent of him split her insides in two. The shirt fell to the floor and she sank into the bed, her breath coming with difficulty. Her hand reached over to where Esme had draped her coat across the foot of the bed and she slid her phone out of the pocket. Her finger did not hesitate this time as she pressed the '2.' As she raised the phone to her ear, the sound of her breathing in her ears, the familiar ring sounded from the corner of the room. Her breath ceased entirely.

She approached the leather jacket hung on the chair, the repetitive melody still playing happily. Reaching into the pocket, her hand closed around Jasper's cell phone. She closed her eyes for an instant, letting the pain manifest itself on her face, and gently pressed 'END.' When she opened her eyes, her features were again impassive. She placed the phone on the chair cushion and turned instead to the dresser, not failing to notice the wedding band still lying where he had placed it the morning before. She picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, noticing the presence in the doorway but not responding to it.

"You know," Rosalie began, approaching her from behind, "That was a completely dreadful thing to do. Probably the worst thing he has done in his entire life."

Alice dropped the ring with a clatter. "Why are you saying this, Rosalie?" she asked quietly.

"I'm only saying I don't know that I would take him back."

Alice whirled on her. "Well, I apologize, fair Rosalie, for not dying to hear your opinion, because I happen not to share the belief that everyone will always come crawling back to me!"

Rosalie's gaze roamed over the carpet, her voice taking on a wounded tinge. "Alice, I had no cruel intentions."

"I don't particularly care what your intentions were. This is one of the many things in this world that does not concern you."

"It does concern me that you are in pain," Rosalie whispered, turning slowly and walking to the door.

"Rose," Alice called in a strained tone.

Rosalie paused in the hall and looked back at her. "I do understand."

Emmett edged into the room a moment after Rosalie disappeared, offering Alice a wry smile. "She really is sorry, you know."

Alice sighed. "But you shouldn't have to correct her carelessness."

He shrugged, his smile turning affectionate. "Some faults…you know, you try to balance each other out." She stiffened and he noticed. "God, Alice, I'm sorry." He was across the room in an instant, swallowing her in a massive hug.

"Do you think he will come back?" she asked faintly.

"I don't know." He pulled back to look down at her. "I hope so."

She crawled into the bed as the sun went down as if out of human instinct, listening to the sounds of the house at night. Rosalie and Emmett were leaving to go hunting. Carlisle was reading something from the newspaper aloud to Esme. Edward was dropping off his car to run back to Bella's house.

She turned over onto her stomach, as she liked to lie during the times that they would pretend to sleep, but now she could only be acutely aware that even if she stretched out her arms and legs, the bed would be empty.


	4. Chapter 4

He crossed the ditch back to the car for the third time. The hood was still warm as he leaned against the front bumper, letting out his breath in a hollow rush. He was somewhere near the border of Idaho and Montana, on the shoulder of a nearly vacant highway. He forced his eyes open, though the urge to close them was stronger than it had been in at least sixty years. If he closed his eyes, he would see her face, and leaving the car would make sense again. He refused to justify weakness. If he was to prove himself completely irresolute, he would at least feel ashamed of it.

He should not be here. He should be back in the car, back in Minnesota, on the way to England, France, Russia, even. As far away as he could get, never again to fail and face the pain in her eyes. Never again to hurt her. Alice.

He was barely conscious of his steps as he abandoned the car for a fourth time. This time, as he reached the cover of the trees, he took off running.

_No_, he hissed, but his feet betrayed him, his shattered will crumbling further with every stride. He couldn't block out the chant of _Alice_ pounding in his ears like a heartbeat. He crossed the Washington state line devoid of any strength to turn back.

He wondered briefly how long he could run without stopping, because there was no logical argument for a vampire to need rest. As long as he stayed out of sight of the road, he could likely cross the entire continent. Then the trees started to look familiar. A glow appeared in the distance, growing steadily into a brightness ahead; he pushed himself faster and faster until he broke out of the trees and froze at the sight of the white house.

Everything was still, the ground now dry and the air clear beneath the clouds, as if the horrible night had never occurred. He was about to step out of the trees when the red BMW came tearing up the drive and skidded to a stop directly in front of the door.

"Emmett!" the perfect shriek pronounced, as a golden figure emerged from the driver's side. A booming laugh sounded from somewhere inside the house and Rosalie seemed to slam the car door and force the front door open in one movement. Jasper imagined how it would go, like always, her screaming and hurling things at Emmett until they both ended up laughing instead. It didn't matter that he couldn't feel the flimsiness of her anger; they always worked out.

He stared across the yard at the closed door. How could he go back to that? He had followed such a pattern of normalcy up until just a few days earlier. But now he was looking at the normalcy continuing without him.

That was only two of the family accounted for, and the sudden thought that Edward might be near sent him scrambling to shield his thoughts. Until he saw her, until he knew, she could not be aware of his presence. She should have seen it anyway, he argued, but maybe his decision wasn't entirely certain. He felt anything but resolute.

He had to see her.

He circled to the rear of the house under the cover of the trees. Looking through the wall of sheer glass, he was very nearly in plain sight as he watched Esme cross the living room. When she reached the stairs, he dashed to the massive tree that rose toward the sky fifty feet from the house, the one he normally saw from the inside the bedroom. It was juvenile, he admitted that, but one of the thick branches had to be level with the second floor.

Climbing was too natural of a skill to require much thought, and he cursed the rush of memories it brought back to him. Worse was peering carefully out of the leaves, fighting the feeling of panic at what he might see, and finding the bedroom empty. His watch calmly ticked out late afternoon, but Alice was not in the house. Even in the absence of his empathy, he swore that he would feel her nearby.

What if she were gone? What if she had gone to Denali? What if Edward, so typical of Edward, was keeping her away to punish him if he realized his mistake? Maybe the bigger mistake was to return at all. Jasper moved from his crouch on the branch and found one behind that he could lean against. He had to know, more than ever, if it was even possible to get his life back.

Hours blurred into one long breath.

Jasper started from his stupor as the front door opened and voices floated outside. Just as quickly, he masked his thoughts: Edward.

"How is she?" Esme's voice.

Bella or Alice?

The door closed and the conversation was lost to a muffled mumble; he strained to decipher the words, but nothing was clear enough to trust. The night passed with an agonizing stillness, the habitual slowing of activity inside seeming to endure for days.

Edward never left the house, leading Jasper to immediately conclude that Alice was at Bella's, though what exactly Edward intended, for it was undoubtedly Edward's doing, he could only guess. His trains of thought intertwined and chased each other in circles as he watched the unchanging room, glimpsing Edward or Esme or Carlisle passing by the open door every so often.

It wasn't until the fourth time he was in the doorway that Edward stopped, something in the room catching his attention. Jasper checked that he was fully hidden in the leaves, but it was the ring on the dresser that Edward had noticed. Edward strode into the room silently and pocketed it, glancing around to see the rumpled blankets on the bed and deftly straightening them.

Jasper felt his insides clench. It was not Edward who was supposed to take care of her.

Edward's head snapped up. He looked around him wildly for the source of the fragment of thought. Jasper corrected frantically, focusing on blankness, hoping Edward would dismiss it as a thought of his own. Suddenly, Esme's voice rang up the stairs and Edward turned from the room as the first hint of dawn crept toward the south side of the house. Simultaneously, Jasper realized that the sun was steadily piercing through the trees.

It was then that she came through the doorway.

Jasper's breath caught in his throat and a searing pain ripped through him at the sight of her. He felt a compelling urge to launch himself through the glass wall, to hide her hand in his and fall to his knees in a plea for forgiveness.

Would she grant him forgiveness.

Would he forgive himself, for what he had done to her and what he would continue to do if he gave in to the feeling now crippling him.

Alice curled onto the bed on one knee, reaching down to pick up the hand mirror that had been knocked to the floor from its perch on the dresser, a tool from an experiment in cosmetics that must have occurred only a week ago, which now seemed a dream instead. She looked down at the face that stared back up at her, the eyes progressively darker than the last time she had glimpsed them, the lips that had declined the hunting trip that she should have agreed to. But the feeling in her body had refused everything but the empty house.

She peered into the mirror, scanning for a visible change and finding none, when the sun reflected fully into the window, covering her body in diamonds and glinting off Jasper's skin into the mirror.

She blinked forcefully, looking up as her concentration was broken, looking straight into Jasper's eyes.

He felt the force of a truck smashing into him as they stared at each other for an immeasurable time. Without breaking eye contact, he inched further along the branch; she found her feet beneath her, found herself inches from the glass. His eyes held a question.

She lifted her hand, the left hand, finger bare, and pressed her fingertips against the glass.

He was scrambling from the branch, down the tree, scraping skin that did not tear along the bark. He was sprinting across the yard, stumbling, forcing the door open. Flying through the place that was his home, up the stairs and to the room that he had left. He stopped dead in the doorway.

She had found the bed beneath her again, frozen facing the door, the breath gone from her lungs for the suspended moment before he appeared in front of her. They locked eyes again, neither moving. She could not close the distance between them. The battle in his head was being drowned out by _Alice, Alice_, until he was crossing the carpet in the slowest steps he had ever taken.

She rose from the bed as he approached her until they were nearly together. He held her gaze as he lifted a hand with shaking fingers to her cheek.

Her eyes closed for an instant as she felt the hollowness collapse inside her. He raised his other hand to the tips of her hair, entwining his fingers, bending his head at the same time that her hands slid up his chest. Her fingertips traced his face as he did the same, over and over, relearning the other until his lips found her lips and his fingers found the ring in his pocket and somehow they both that there was no other choice but this.

Her eyes found his and they held an answer.


End file.
